


i hope you've got the time (to keep that air between your lungs)

by pinkgrapefruit



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, Lesbian AU, Soulmate AU, fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19150999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgrapefruit/pseuds/pinkgrapefruit
Summary: It started when she was five and asked her mama why she had a flower on her arm, and the woman cursed and told her to be quiet, because ‘good girls don’t ask questions.’ When she never heard of the word 'soulmate' spoken in the small town she grew up in, not a speck of blood in the snow as the lily rooted its way into the crook of her elbow.[a trixya soulmate au]





	1. cactus and lily

**Author's Note:**

> this has taken me way too long. thank you to meggie and frey for being the angels they are and getting me through this in one piece - i love them both more than they know. enjoy!

_ Seeming when I'm older that it's younger how I feel _

_ Learning that you only get the raw end of the deal _

_ First one to the finish line, but the last one left to know _

_ Second place adorns you no matter where you go _

  
  


It started on a Monday, except it didn’t - not really. 

 

It started on the day she was born, in a small town in Russia where the rain hadn’t stopped for three days and everyone was a little on edge. It started when the doctor, a sweet old man from St Petersburg, announced loudly, “It’s a girl!” and then, much quieter and with a little sorrow, “and she has a soulmark.” It started when she was five and asked her mama why she had a flower on her arm, and the woman cursed and told her to be quiet, because ‘ _ good girls don’t ask questions. _ ’ When she never heard of the word 'soulmate' spoken in the small town she grew up in, not a speck of blood in the snow as the lily rooted its way into the crook of her elbow. When she cried going through test after test to see if they could remove it, uproot it. When a nurse tried to pull the lily out, tried to yank her second heart straight from her arm. It started when they moved to the USA when she was eight, her father explaining in a hushed tone that the small  _ ‘sm’  _ in her passport wasn’t anything special. And then it changed.

 

It changed in seventh grade when they did a lesson on soulmarks in biology and the teacher was so proud to show off the daffodil on the back of her neck that Katya almost cried. It changed when she watched Alaska’s black dahlia start to uproot itself from her calf midway through a sophomore baseball practice because she saw an exchange student through the fence - their eyes meeting for a brief second before a petal fell onto the grass next to them. She watched them fall in love, until the flower had long removed itself, leaving a faint outline of the flower that had scarred under her skin. It changed when she learned she was one in a million - an urban myth, a soulmate. Half of a whole, unbreakable. 

 

It changed when she met Trixie.

  
  


_ Well I've been out to Austin, back to Boston _

_ Where I've been _

_ Following the highways in my hand _

  
  


It’s a Monday in spring and Katya is 19, but she feels like she’s 30. The cold of Boston has started to dissipate; instead, a warm breeze tickles her ankles through the DIY rips in her jeans. She is _ that kid, _ and she is proud of it. Her long sleeves cover the slight protrusion of a soulmate mark, but if you were to look closely enough, you could make out the raised stem of a lily following the river-like path of her veins under the white jersey.

 

She raises her keep-cup to her lips, lets the bitterness of the coffee overrule the sap that’s filling her mouth more and more often these days, the flower routing deeper into her body with each passing day. She hums to herself as she sketches, letting her ankles catch the sun a little as she sits on her coat on the Charles River Esplanade. Katya is majoring in mechanical engineering at MIT with a minor in women and gender studies - something she finds almost fulfilling when she isn’t frantically sketching out a design that would have been done weeks ago if it wasn't for the new girl in her team. She’s bright blonde, wears heavy makeup and big, pink dresses to the lab; it’s a different kind of feminine to Katya’s messy hair, messy jeans, messy aura of comfort, and she isn't necessarily intimidated, but she is stressed. And distracted. 

 

“Who in their right mind wears a dress to the engineering labs?” she’d whined down the phone to Alaska after the girl's first day. “It didn’t even cover her knees.”

 

“As if you cared about her safety,” croaked the girl, knowingly. “You’re just a whore who can’t focus.”

 

“And you’re paying for a linguistics course?” Katya bit back, laughing as she said it. 

 

As she’s lost in her thoughts, a text comes through. She chuckles as she reads it, types out a hasty reply before throwing her possessions into her rucksack. She drains her coffee, ready to return to the flat and see what in the name of hell is going on.

 

“Your lollipop came round,” yells out Alaska before Katya has even locked the door. The girl shakes off her jacket and stands on the back of her Docs to get them off, shot-putting the cup into the sink from the doorway and letting out a little whoop when it goes in on the first try.

 

“My lollipop? That’s new,” she responds, launching herself onto the couch with a huff. 

 

“Lollipop, Candy Cane, Sugarplum Fairy? They’re all the same to me.” The girl rubs the scar on the back of her leg subconsciously, checking her watch as she does so. “Shouldn't Sharon be home by now?” she questions, reading the ache in her leg.

 

“Said she set off a few minutes ago,” reads Katya from Alaska’s phone - the other girl grabbing it off her when she realises.

 

She stands up, potters into the kitchen to make a fourth cup of coffee and tries to start a conversation over the whistling of the kettle. 

 

“So Trixie was here?” she yells over the din, answered only by the nodding of the giant space buns sticking up from the back of the couch.

 

“Uhuh, said something about a double major being shit and meeting somewhere at six-ish.”

 

“Alaska, you bitch!” she shouts as she checks the time on the oven. It’s five forty-five and she’d promised to meet Trixie at a little cafe twenty minutes away (not that she’d realised, the river seemed to speed up time).

 

She sprints out the door like she’s on a mission. She sort of is.

  
  


_ When I go back to Wisconsin _

_ And when I come home again _

_ Has anybody out there seen my man? _

  
  


Trixie never intended to do engineering. She intended to do fashion design and become, well, a fashion designer, but life doesn’t always go the way you plan and, like a cat afraid of water, she’s swimming now.

 

She switched to MIT in her third year because she was told she could, decided to swap design to design engineering and then mechanical, because two days before school started again, she was told they weren’t running that course - double majoring in biology too, because why the hell not. She thinks like a fashion design student, but works like a physicist - something that’s made her very few friends in the new course, but someone she appears to be especially at odds with is Katya. It’s not a cruel rivalry - nothing about it is malicious or rude, they’re just very different. Katya thinks like an engineer and dresses like an edgy art kid, Trixie - doesn’t.

 

It’s been three months since she got there and she feels she should probably make peace. It’s definitely her own choice, not the spines that are tearing holes in her clothes as they slowly extrude from her arm. The way they twist in her vein like a bad cannula, bruising, til her arm looks like a galaxy and her freckles are the stars. She’s started bandaging over the worst bits, the spikes getting stuck in her coats, so when she takes them off, they pull and tug. She’s not stupid, she knows what it means. But she doesn’t have to be excited about it.

 

He parents had always explained soulmates very nicely and concisely, and like they were a choice. Like she didn’t have to have one, like it could go away. They’d said ‘ _ Trixie, darling, that cactus isn’t everything, you are more than it,’ _ and yet she’s always treated it like it was. Like it ruled her destiny - she believes it does. 

 

They meet on a sunny Monday in April, Boston raining intermittently, but the sun trying its very hardest, like a halogen bulb about to blow. She reckons she has enough time to redress her arm before the other girl arrives, takes a seat in a comfy armchair by the window, ripping off the cover like it isn’t pulling out parts of her heart - tiny needles that were once veins. Maybe it’s because she has her eyes closed in pain that she doesn't notice Katya. The girl floating in, pausing at the counter to get a refill in her reusable cup and pulling out a metal straw for Trixie as she sits down opposite. She looks in awe at the  Gymnocalycium in the crook of her arm. How its tiny spineless flowers sit flush to the skin, while the rest seems like it’s jumping out. 

 

“So,” she says, breaking the silence. “Hi.”

  
  


_ Coming home reminds you that you ain't got long to go _

_ 'Til you can't make it to the mailbox, not in all this snow _

_ I hope you've got the time to keep that air between your lungs _

_ I hope you've got the hand to pull the plug when that day comes _

  
  


Their tutor calls them into her office on an unusually hot day, both women sweating under their respective overalls and cotton dress. Katya feels the heat like it’s under her skin, splitting muscle from fat with a hot layer of wetness that makes her shiver a little. She’s the sweatiest woman alive, or so she likes to say, but the stuffiness of the basement office isn’t helping the way her skin crawls under the chino cloth. Trixie, despite being significantly less covered, doesn’t seem to be faring any better. The humidity makes her skin flush the colour of cyclamen flowers in the summer. 

 

Katya feels a tug in her arm as she watches the girl listen intently. It’s like the lily has a mind of its own, and she’s not stupid, but she’d like to keep her denial for a little bit longer. It smells like pink gin and tastes like comfort.

 

“I want a paper on the advancement of bionic prosthetics on my desk in two weeks. It’ll be 20 percent of your final grade,” the teacher drones as if it hasn’t crossed her mind how absurd of a task it is. It probably hasn’t, and it makes Katya’s blood boil in a way that she isn’t so willing to chalk down to heat or some form of ailment that this flower is definitely giving her. Can you boil sap? She vows to google it when she gets home.

 

They leave in a discontented silence, Trixie thumbing the loose edge of her bandage as they let the slight breeze remove the sheen of moisture covering them. The light hurts their heads a little, but so does the assignment, so they can’t win. Katya texts Alaska a series of angry emojis and the girl replies with a squid.

 

“Two weeks? Fucking ridiculous,” Trixie mutters under her breath, eyebrows furrowed and teeth gritted slightly as she stomps down the stairs ahead of the other girl. 

 

“I know!”

 

They sit in a huff on the cool concrete steps of the main block. The height of the building casts a shadow that they bask in as they grumble, each wondering how exactly they got stuck together.

 

“How do we do this?”

 

“How much do you like the library?”

  
  


_ Well I've been out to Austin, back to Boston _

_ Where I've been _

_ Following the highways in my hand _

  
  


After two days, they have a permanent table in the library. It’s in a private study room off to the side, which the librarian has stuck a reserved sign on. When Katya goes to ask who’s reserved it, the woman just hands her a key and the rest is history. It’s nice though, they can leave their notes there instead of taking them home and forgetting them (after Trixie did that one morning, Katya didn’t speak to her for four hours).

 

The shorter girl thanks god that her minor finished months ago, is almost grateful that this project means she won’t have to do any more stupid things at the same time. She feels something that could almost be called empathy for Trixie, her biology professor throwing lab work after lab work at the girl, like she’s a women's softball player and not an overworked college student. Trixie can play softball, that’s just not the point. 

 

She divulges this information when Katya returns with two coffees, a black for herself and a sakura latte for Trixie. She doesn’t point out the irony that the girl is willing to drink the thing that’s killing her, doesn’t think they’re there yet. They discuss the ins and outs of everyone's favourite lesbian sport and there are points where Katya even laughs.

 

They are high on life and caffeine when they lean in, slow, tense. The air feels humid and full of pent up stress that drips down the walls like wet paint - smells like despair and tastes like tea leaves. Katya takes two fingers, tucking Trixie's blonde hair behind her ear before moving them under her chin, pulling it up, so it is angled in a way that leaves her vulnerable. She looks so pretty, eyes closed and lips parted and they almost forget where they are. Then the clock strikes eleven and Trixie's eyes snap open. She is like a Cinderella when she realises how close their lips are (an inch, maybe less), and she jumps away like she has been burned. Like Katya's fingers were candles, flaming and hot.

 

Katya wishes for a second that she had not felt the flower's roots loosen around her lung, snake their way out of her aorta and her small intestine for a second there. It would make it all easier to accept as Trixie runs out of the room in a state of panic. The dark blonde reaches for the dredges of her coffee, downs what is left as she rubs on the protrusion taking up her forearm. When she coughs, she feels it shift and it hurts. She supposes the pain reminds her she is alive. She wishes it wouldn't.

  
  


_ When I go back to Wisconsin _

_ And when I come home again _

_ Has anybody out there seen my man? _

  
  


After a few more days of quiet working, Katya notices something. It's not a subtle change, comes rather suddenly, but the girl she is working with looks different. Trixie has lost weight, her eyes are hollow and dark as she flicks the pages of research they have been doing for hours. Her hair, that once glistened like it contained the sun, looks limp and flat. There is no sheen, just plain yellow. She has to work up the nerve to ask what has happened as the girl sips her water.

 

"Are - are you okay?" She hates the way her voice breaks. She hates how Trixie's voice sounds even more.

 

"Uhuh, peachy," comes the other girl sardonically. Her voice is unnaturally hoarse as if she has been screaming for days on end. Katya winces at the sound of it. 

 

"Are you sure? You don't look well."

 

Trixie turns, makes eye contact with her for the first time in days and it's like Katya was  looking through a façade as she sees her skin grey under the warm lights of the study room.

 

"My body is a temple that has been overtaken with weeds," she chuckles and the other girl wants to make a joke about poetry slams and spoken word but, ironically, she cannot find the words. She does not know the prayers to make this go away.

 

They return to the complacent silence they held - it is not comfortable but it does not feel so much like thorns.

 

When Katya gets home that night, she falls onto the couch, eyeballing Sharon and Alaska cuddling, but more so the Thai food they have spread on the coffee table.

 

"’Lasky, Shar-Bear," she starts, earning a cold glare from Sharon and a gesture towards the food. She picks up a random noodle dish and helps herself as she continues. "I think Trixie is the one."

 

"Trixie?"

 

"Lollipop, Candyfloss, Barbie - _That one_ , yes."

 

"And she's the _ one _ ?" Alaska's eyes narrow, she might have known this, but the urgency with which the idea is being conveyed now frightens her a little as she melts a little further into Sharon's side.

 

"Yes," replies Katya, mouth full of noodles, "And I don't know what to do."

 

"How much time you got?" enquires Alaska's partner, muting the television less out of common decency and more pure nosiness. Katya pulls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, reads the lily like one would read a watch. The marks and clocks are rather similar in their idea, she muses to herself, although only one predicts your death. She doesn't think any deeper into that.

 

Sharon mutters something under her breath that sounds like ' _ Jesus,'  _ but could have easily been anything else.

 

"You might want to work fast, Kitty-Cat, that flower isn't gonna wait much longer." As Katya looks down, the penultimate petal falls off - she inhales sharply. Sharon definitely mutters  _ 'Jesus _ ' this time.

  
  


_ Hippodromes and hedons sipping Seagram's from my mug _

_ Pills at all the parties that we sweep beneath the rug _

_ Figuring that loving's just the kind of dice you throw _

_ Can a cactus and a lily find a common pot to grow? _

  
  


It ends on a Monday too. 

 

Trixie keels over after they have handed in their paper, a couple of pages tear-stained and one slightly darkened (although Katya swears she did not spill coffee on it). The blonde falls into Katya's arms as they walk down the shallow steps outside the main building; it's almost in slow-motion as the girl has to reach to grab her safely. She retches a couple of times as she lays there, eyes streaming as she holds her stomach like it's falling apart.

 

It feels like it is.

 

Trixie's always wondered if cacti have spikes on their roots, and, based on this moment and this moment alone, she truly believes that they do.. She feels every organ is being squeezed, the air forced out of her lungs, acid out of her stomach and blood from her heart. Her pulse is simultaneously skyrocketing and bottoming out, and her mouth is filling with the artificially sweet taste of sap. Her mama always told her that she would never have to know what it's like to never find your soulmate, and the worst part is that she did find hers. All five feet and four inches, with dirty blonde, messy hair; paint splattered rucksack and ripped jeans; loves books but loves maths more, nerd. But she can still feel the roots of her love tearing her up inside as she looks into Katya's eyes through the sheen of tears.

 

She cannot hear what is being said through the pounding of her heart and the all-encompassing ripping of her organs. It's like a violin playing Dvorak's 'New World,' but the strings are loose and the bow is torn up and there is no sheet music. It's an awful cacophony of suffering and hopelessness.

 

She does not feel when she closes her eyes.

 

She does feel when everything stops.

  
  


_ Well I've been out to Austin, back to Boston _

_ Where I've been _

_ Following the highways in my hand _

  
  


When their lips touch, Katya wants a cosmic supernova. She wants to feel a universe expand and collapse in a second between them, some fiery explosion that tells her this is right. She needs bright lights and flashing words in the sky, 'congratulations dumbass' spelt out in fireworks. She gets none of that.

 

Instead, she feels the unmistakable tug of heartstrings as they pick up a song she'd long forgotten, years after dropping violin in sixth grade. She feels her fingers move to the second fret of the A string, vibrato against the low wheezing of Trixie's breath, the only sign she's still alive. Her body plays Largo by memory as the lily snakes out of her vena cava. It's uncomfortable, like pulling out a tooth or popping a dislocated elbow back into place, and as the low G swells in her heart, she feels something push against her sleeve.

 

She pulls away with a start.

 

Gently moving Trixie's head further onto her knees, she rolls up her sweater, hands shaking a little. When it moves past her elbow, a lily falls onto the concrete next to her.

 

She feels its loss like a dead weight in her arm.

 

It's hard to explain how it feels to lose something so dear to you, even if it means you gain something more. The lily that had caused so much grief, so much pain as it rooted its way deep into her being, gone in an instant. An uncomfortable few seconds followed by a lifetime of freedom. She examines the arm with fervour, the flower having left no exit wound, just a perfect scar.

 

It is then she has the idea to check on Trixie’s.

 

The girl lets out a heavy breath followed by a hacking cough as Katya twists her forearm. Surely enough, the cactus has left an imprint of buds and needles on the soft skin. It feels a little rough to touch but still has the thrum of a heartbeat under it, rooting it home.

 

Trixie studies Katya for a little, before moving her head up to meet the girl. She doesn't taste of sap anymore, she notes, but of strawberries. She decides that it is now her favourite flavour.

  
  


_ When I go back to Wisconsin _

_ And when I come home again _

_ Has anybody out there seen my man? _

  
  


"So, this is Lollipop," Alaska teases when Katya brings her girlfriend over for the first time. It's like an obligatory meet the family dinner, except they've already met and they're ordering Chinese.

 

When Sharon turns up, she gives Trixie a once over before mouthing something along the lines of 'nice ass' to Alaska, who rolls her eyes a little before nodding. Ever one for subtleties, Sharon repeats the same sentiment to the girl in question, who blushes the colour of raspberries and mutters a quiet 'thank you.' The older girl decides she likes her.

 

"So, Candyfloss, what's your flower?" questions Alaska once they're deep on champagne and sweet and sour chicken. Trixie buries her head in Katya's shoulder for a second, before rolling the sleeves of her dress up to reveal the cactus she's had painstakingly tattooed over her mark. 

 

"It felt a little more permanent," she justifies as the other girls goggle, Katya looking smug. "Plus you couldn't really see it before."

 

Her girlfriend takes her hand gently in her own and presses a featherlight kiss to the tattoo. 

 

"I love it, babe," she whispers and when they kiss, it tastes of strawberry chapstick and she feels the supernova she's always wanted.

  
  


_ Has anybody out there seen my man? _


	2. how to over-water a cactus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [alternate ending]

Katya feels Trixie go limp in her arms and wonders if this is where the train stops. If this is where she gets off and never returns to the land of the living, destined only to act as a word of warning to everyone. Romeo and Juliet could never.

 

She feels the lily tighten its hold on her heart, learnt enough biology during a work placement with pacemakers to envision its roots working their way into her right atrium through the superior vena cava and down into the ventricle. Imagines it as it snakes back up and out the pulmonary artery and round through her lungs. It goes back through the pulmonary vein and into her left atrium and ventricle, before exiting her aorta like some weird bread plait, but less tasty.

 

As the pressure increases she wishes they’d gone somewhere more comfortable, because the concrete steps digging into her back are almost as bad as the way her kidneys are twisting to accommodate her second heart. 

 

The taste of sap burns the back of her throat, and as she slips under, she swears she feels a whisper of strawberries on her tongue like a promise. A solemn goodbye.

 

*

 

Heaven has more pink than she imagined.

**Author's Note:**

> come harass me over on tumblr @pink-grapefruit-cafe
> 
> please comment - it really means the world to me <3


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